Offering the promise of sharing scholarship, open-access journals have become widespread in recent years; but so have misunderstandings about such journals, fueled by a lack of actual data. This issue of Library Technology Reports will help you look beyond the Directory of Open Access Journals, offering tools for a more substantive evaluation. It shows the state of gold open access (OA), including the percentage of journals that require author-side fees as well as the percentage of articles published by those journals. Break-out data on publishing activity by academic discipline is also included, enabling you to tailor your approach according to subject area. A handy 14-step checklist of evaluation criteria will help you identify questionable journals in five minutes' time.

Walt Crawford

Walt Crawford is an internationally recognized writer and speaker on libraries, technology, policy and media. Author of numerous books, articles, and columns, Crawford is also the creator, writer and publisher of Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large, an ejournal on the intersections of libraries, policy, technology and media published monthly since 2001. He maintains a blog on these and other issues, Walt at Random. He received the LITA/Library Hi Tech Award for Outstanding Communication for Continuing Education in Library and Information Science in 1995, the ALCTS/Blackwell Scholarship Award in 1997, and the Gale Group Online Excellence in Information Authorship Award in 1998.

Library Technology Reports

Published by ALA TechSource, Library Technology Reports helps librarians make informed decisions about technology products and projects. Library Technology Reports publishes eight issues annually and provides thorough overviews of current technology. Reports are authored by experts in the field and may address the application of technology to library services, offer evaluative descriptions of specific products or product classes, or cover emerging technology. Find out more information on this publication and how you can subscribe here.